January 14, 2006

Television star Pamela Anderson is leading a campaign to have the bust of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland Sanders removed from the Kentucky state capitol.

In a letter to Gov. Ernie Fletcher, the former Baywatch star says suppliers for the fast food chain, now called KFC, engage in cruel and unusual treatment of chickens, including tearing the heads off of live birds, spitting tobacco into their eyes and spray-painting their faces.

Anderson wrote the letter with the help of People for the Ethical Treatment of animals. In a statement issued by PETA, Anderson said, "The bust of Colonel Sanders stands as a monument to cruelty and has no place in the Kentucky state capitol."

I'm sure PETA has its choice of celebrities whenever it launches a campaign. It's not as if Anderson is from Kentucky -- or even the South. She's not just northern, she's Canadian! I've got to think they deliberately sought publicity but cuing up the easist possible jokes -- comedy for dummies. It's a challenge, a taunt: Leno, we dare you to keep your hands off this bust!

I met Colonel Sanders and his wife, Claudia, in 1977. Claudia told me she was the actual creator of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. The colonel neither confirmed nor denied his wife's claim when he talked to me. Quite frankly, I didn't have the nerve to ask him about it.

PETA is already mostly a bunch of vegetarians, so except for maybe a coke at the drive up window, there is very little at fast food restaurants they order anyway. So their actual direct economic pull is minimal, maybe limited to 'I won't even buy a coke from you,' or pleading with anyone they know who is not a vegetarian to at least avoid the 'boycott target de jour.' They depend on giving out bad press to do what damage like this they can do.

So, relying on the 'power of bad press,' they threatened McDonald's, Burger King and several other fast food outlets that they would organize a boycott if those organizations didn't give in to their demands regarding the standards they ask their contractors to follow. So, McDonalds and Burger King did in fact knuckle under, apparently fearing the bad publicity. Of course, while PETA didn't specifically organize a boycott against these restaurants, they also didn't change their stance that people still shouldn't eat there because they serve meat.

Then they got to KFC. This has been going on for a couple of years, and KFC basically told them where to put it and refused to change anything to comply with PETA's demands.

So their bluff was called, and they gone after KFC with a vengeance. Only, because they are already spread so thin, their 'vengeance' is like spitting gum on their shoe. They have no leverage, so they are reduced to pathetic stuff like this.

But I know that to be successful, you have to have the leverage to back it up with, not just go out and threaten everybody you are angry at and then not have any ammunition about what to do if somebody says, 'No!'

And recognizing that the number of people who will participate in such a product boycott is relatively small at least initially, to make it effective, you need to limit the number of businesses that you boycott, and keep it focused very narrowly.

PETA tried to fight every battle everywhere, and in so doing have only exposed their own weakness.

I'll go along with Eli; the odds do seem, er, stacked against them. Just once, I'd like someone to cite some evidence of such cruel behavior. I suppose I could go look for it myself, but really, why should I bust my ass doing their work?